Monday, December 12, 2016

Care Package from Khurasan Miniature

As I start to get back into moderns I have made a few decisions on what miniatures I want to use. I admit to not really looking to closely at Battle Front's Team Yankee miniatures I'm familiar enough with the WWII line that I figured these were probably not the miniatures I wanted to use. After looking at what is available I settled on Khurasan Miniatures for my infantry. While the line is not extensive the available poses are good, more than good enough for the miniatures table for sure.Currently my intent is to actually play Team Yankee from Battle Front but I'm certainly willing to go back to other rules sets if necessary. To duplicate the Mech Infantry Platoon from Team Yankee I was going to need some pretty specific weapon groupings.A Team Yankee platoon is made up of 4 squads, with Dragon ATGM support.A stand of four figures represents the squad and includes the M249 SAW, M203 Grenade Launchers and LAWs. That's a lot of specialized weapons for a four man stand! I also need four two man stands for the Dragon ATGM, Oh and one stand of 3 M16 (I think this is a command stand as its on a small base)I sat down and went through the Khurasan listing to see what I might need and found three packs that would probably take care of everything:1980s-US-INF-RIFLE: 15mm 1980s-1990s US Army Mechanized Infantry Riflemen (x8 with M16 in eight poses)

From this list it looks like I would need one of the US-INF-RIFLE, four of the US-INF-SQUAD-WEAP (because there is only one Dragon ATGM per pack) and one of the US-INF-COMMAND to provide some variety.The last listing on the page was this one:1980s-US-INF-PLATOON-DEAL: 15mm 1980s-1990s US Army Mechanized Infantry Platoon Deal (one pack of Rifles, three packs of Heavy Weapons, one pack of Command)I opted to pick up the platoon deal and add a US-INF-SQUAD-WEAP pack to make sure I had enough Dragons. I'll have extra SAWs and grenade launchers but they could come in handy later. I don't know when I'll be able to use the M60 MGs either but I'm sure they will show up some where in a TOE.I also picked up one M113. The pictures look great but I wanted to see one before I committed. They are slightly more expensive than the plastic M113 from Battle Front not enough to make me cringe though,

From the Khurasan Website

The M113 in my shipment.

Here is the potential miscast. Fortunately it is easily fixable.

After I opened up the bag with the M113 and its associated parts I noted an issue with the rear hull. I emailed Khurasan right away about the potential miscast here and he contacted his caster right away to send a replacement. The caster suggested that it could be fixed with the hot water treatment so I agreed to give that a try. It really did work like a charm. I was able to manipulate it back to straight without to much effort. The entire email exchange probably took 15 minutes. That's some seriously good service. Based on this one and the email exchange I am definitely going to finish up the platoon with 3 more Khurasan M113s.I will be buying the Battle Front M113s at some point as they can be assembled as the M106 mortar carrier.You can find all of this on the Khurasan Miniatures website at: Khurasan Miniatures Late Cold War